Cuspy dark matter haloes and the Galaxy

The microlensing optical depth to Baade's Window constrains the minimum tot al mass in baryonic matter within the Solar circle to be greater than simil ar to3.9 x 10(10) M-., assuming the inner Galaxy is barred with viewing ang le similar to 20 degrees. From the kinematics of solar neighbourhood stars, the local surface density of dark matter is similar to 30 +/- 15 M-. pc(-2 ). We construct cuspy haloes normalized to the local dark matter density an d calculate the circular-speed curve of the halo in the inner Galaxy. This is added in quadrature to the rotation curve provided by the stellar and IS M discs, together with a bar sufficiently massive so that the baryonic matt er in the inner Galaxy reproduces the microlensing optical depth. Such mode ls violate the observational constraint provided by the tangent-velocity da ta in the inner Galaxy (typically at radii 2-4 kpc). The high baryonic cont ribution required by the microlensing is consistent with implications from hydrodynamical modelling and the pattern speed of the Galactic bar. We conc lude that the cuspy haloes favoured by the cold dark matter cosmology (and its variants) are inconsistent with the observational data on the Galaxy.